Sep 10, 2011

The young and the old...

After returning from warm and sunny Andalucía our work continued in rainy Bergen. And what a week to be back with rain in loads every day. A quick check of the gulls in heavy rain 8th of September gave us our oldest Mew gull (Larus canus) so far.

Unfortunately we were only able to take pictures of the ring. After checking the pictures we sent the number of the ring by sms to Alf Tore Mjøs, who also is part of the urban ringing project in Norway. He quickly replied that this gull was ringed by him self (!) on 28th of October in 1992 as a 3Y+ at exactly the same location. This makes this individual at least 21 years of age. The same bird was also seen and read at Blåvands huk in Denmark 6th of February this year. The observation in Denmark makes this bird much more interesting and we will really try to catch it and put a plastic ring on it. Is it using Bergen as a stop-over site for moulting and will continue it's migration southwards?

In addition to set an age record we also had our first observation of a true urban nestling Mew Gull ringed in Bergen. J6R1 which hatched on Marineholmen (University of Bergen campus) the 8th of June this year was observed in Sandnes 170 km south of Bergen. Nice observation be we want more...

Blue line: Showing the movement of the 21 year old Mew Gull (MA27418) from Blåvandshuk 06.02.2011 to Bergen 08.09.2011. Red line: Showing the urban nestling J6R1 movement from where it hatched in Bergen to Sandnes South-Western Norway where it was observed by Alf Tore Mjøs 04.09.2011.

MA27418 our 21 year old Mew Gull in heavy rain in Bergen

J6R1 at it's hatching site at University of Bergen campus 25th of July 2011